Saturday, October 28, 2006

Vegeta, what does the scanner say about his power level?

Duncan Not Allowed in On-field Dog Pile

Posted by Ross

As the St. Louis Cardinals celebrated their first World Seriels victory in more than two decades in front of tens of thousands of delirious, screaming fans, one player was notably absent from the traditional on-field dog pile:

Right fielder Chris Duncan.

Duncan, who wouldn't have been able to crack the lineup at first base, his primary position, because of incumbent superstar Albert Pujols, had to learn right field on the fly this season, and it's been an adventure from beginning to end, including two gigantic miscues in last night's World Series-clinching fifth game.

Fresh from the dog pile, mouth still tasting of Yadier Molina's jock strap, slick-fielding centerfielder Jim Edmonds commented on Duncan's exclusion: "Sure we held on to win despite his two bone-headed plays. But what if we had been the Cubs, what then? Hell, I'd probably be dead right now."

Duncan himself was unavailable for comment, and there were uncomfirmed reports his father, Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan, had sent him to his room and took away his Play Station priviledges for two weeks.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Just as I was getting back into regular blogging . . .

Posted by Raznor

My iBook is on the fritz. It's currently in the shop being repaired, but in the meantime, I don't have the regular access to internet. If I have any regular readers, I try to read Glenn Greenwald every day, and I suggest you do too.

In the meantime, I'm finally putting some work into a first comic that I hope to have online sometime in the near future. I anticipate having all the artwork done by the end of the year, and the technical aspects of doing a webtoon are new to me, so it may be some time after that before I get it available online. But Raznor shall be a webtoonist. Dammit!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Comment by Keith Olbermann

And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awaken to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.

Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

We have been here before—and we have been here before, led here by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.

We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.

American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.

We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.

American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.

And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.”

American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.

Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.

Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.

Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.

And Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

In times of fright, we have been only human.

We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.

We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”

We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.

Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.

Or substitute the Japanese.

Or the Germans.

Or the Socialists.

Or the Anarchists.

Or the Immigrants.

Or the British.

Or the Aliens.

The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And, always, always wrong.

“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”

Wise words.

And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.

Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.

You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.

Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.

We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.

You, sir, have now befouled that spring.

You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.

You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.

For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.

And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.

We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere - anywhere.

And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.

And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

This President now has his blank check.

He lied to get it.

He lied as he received it.

Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?

“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”

"Presumed innocent," Mr. Bush?

The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.

"Access to an attorney," Mr. Bush?

Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.

"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?

The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.

Your words are lies, Sir.

They are lies that imperil us all.

“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”

That terrorist, sir, could only hope.

Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.

Habeas corpus? Gone.

The Geneva Conventions? Optional.

The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.

These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”

And did it even occur to you once, sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 -- that with only a little further shift in this world we now know—just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died --- did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for -- and convene a Military Commission to try -- not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?

Friday, October 20, 2006

JD Hayworth - dumb and evil

Posted by Raznor

So the best way Hayworth could think of to counter charges of anti-semitism was to send a surrogate to say unbelievably offensive shit to a room full of Jews while another surrogate responds to Jews being offended by offensive bullshit by cleverly quipping, "No wonder there are anti-Semites." No, that's brilliant.

If you believe in the Iraq War hard enough, maybe 100,000 troups will just materialize

Posted by Raznor

Glenn Greenwald has a good post about John McCain's entirely incoherent plan for winning in Iraq.

So, to recap McCain's position: (1) in order to win in Iraq, we need to expand our military by 100,000 more troops; (2) we don't have anywhere near 100,000 troops to send to Iraq, and nobody suggests that we do; (3) a draft is absolutely unnecessary.

Read the rest. It is really amazing how completely unwilling any Republican is to advocate anything resembling sane foreign policy. Greenwald also notes this interview between Powerline's John Hinderaker and Senate candidate (emphasis mine).

HINDERAKER: Let's talk about the war in Iraq. What's the difference between you and your opponent, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, when it comes to the war in Iraq?

KENNEDY: You know, I've been consistently focused on adapting to win - whatever it takes to make sure that we prevail against an emey that has stated that their goal is to - y'know - eliminate us from the face of the earth.

My opponent came out on Meet The Press and twice said that the approach should be a diplomatic and political solution - that we should negotate with people who would just as soon kill us as look at us. We need to make sure we prevail, but we can't just get there by wishing it would go away. We have to make sure we support our troops and do what is necessary to achieve victory.

HINDERAKER: How about the economy?

Nice strategy. Kinda reminds me of "we can't just sit by and wish Tinkerbell would get better, we have to clap really hard and believe we can make her better."

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

NLCS prediction

Posted by Raznor

Thanks to yesterday's rainout, Glavine is pitching tonight on 4 days rest. Due to this fact, I predict the Mets will win this series. That said, I wouldn't be too surprised, even if Mets win tonight, to see the Cardinals take 2 games in New York, but I don't think that'll happen.

In any case, I'll also go ahead and predict Tigers beat the Mets in the World Series in 5 games.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

This just seems like it's going to be eternally significant

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Holy Fuck- Muse is the fucking rockingest band ever!

Posted by Raznor

So I just saw Muse perform here in Seattle. Greatest concert I've been to in my life. They didn't play Citizen Erased, which is my favorite Muse song, but still incredible. The concert finished with a great performance of Knights of Cydonia.

Here's the playlist they did. I'm doing this from memory:

Main set:1. Take a Bow2. Hysteria3. New Born4. Butterflies and Hurricanes5. Map of the Problematique6. Muscle Museum7. Starlight8. Time is Running Out9. Invincible10. Bliss11. Stockholm Syndrome12. Plug In Baby13. Supermassive Black Hole

he Upstate media today is all about Tom Reynolds' bizarre press conference yesterday, at which he surrounded himself by small children. At one point, reporters asked if he could make the children leave so they could as adult questions, and he refused.

As August Pollak notes, it shows a cowardice of the press as well as complete craven cowardice by Reynolds, and suggests one of them saying something like "Mr. Reynolds, it's our job to ask questions about this, so if these parents aren't allowed to let their children leave the room they're going to have to deal with hearing questions about pederasty."

Oooh, how I wish I were there. Here's what I would have asked when Reynolds refused to tell the children to leave the stage:

Question: Okay, this question is for the children who you've surrounded yourself with. Children, raise your hand if Representative Mark Foley has ever molested you or sent inappropriate e-mails. Okay, same question, but now for Representative Reynolds.